A place for John to rant and rave about his passions: music, movies, literature, soccer, his strange attempts at writing (songs, poems, short stories, and now even books), and general mayhem.

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Are We Sick, Yet?

Are you sick of my posts about NaNoWriMo, yet? Too bad! I'm gearing up for the contest and am almost ready to start stabbing at this beastie. I realized tonight (while sitting in Bankruptcy class, mind wandering...) that I have some serious prep to do. So, as my faithful followers (is anyone even still there?) you are stuck hearing about...

John Cory's Official NaNoWriMo 2011 Purple Prep Plan:

1. Conditioning - Both mental and physical. Mentally, I need to continue my practice writing sessions and I need to meet my 5,000 words in a week goal at least once before the month is out. This week is my last chance. Fortunately Friday is a holiday and I am in a serious writing mood. Unfortunately I have written nothing so far this week so I am already waaay behind. It's ok though. Positive thoughts. Go to my happy place. Fluff my aura. I'm going to get it this week and I'm going to start off November with the sweet taste of victory already in my mouth. Physically, I need to enhabit (that is a new word I just invented and am rather enjoying) a 5:00 a.m. wake up time. After my daily scripture study, I will have 1.5 hours of uninterrupted writing to try and hit my daily word quota.

2. Planning - I need a functioning outline, asap. Tonight I tried to write a synopsis of my story on the NaNoWriMo site and failed miserably. It was a mess and probably for the same reason I assumed that writing a synopsis would be easy; this story is over developed having stewed in my mind for so long. So, I will attempt Graham Bradley's patented Magic 3x5 Index Card Outlining Method to hammer out my scenes and get some plot points straightened out.

3. Emotional and Mental Motivating - If there is anything that I learned from my practice writing this month, is that I am easily distracted by life (both its fun and stress) and procrastination. So, first I will strategically place motivating reminder notes where my distractions most frequently occur: the TV and computer. This will help on those nights when I fail to meet my daily word quota in my morning writing session. Second, I will shame myself in advance into victory by planning a victory party and inviting people to it. Take that, John's normal safety net of unannounced goals in life!

4. Removing Distractions - First, I am limiting the number of movies and TV shows that I check out from the library. Second, I am instituting the Rule of Dangling Carrot; I cannot watch any movie or TV show, surf the web, check Facebook or Twitter, or even blog until after I have met my daily word quota. I had hoped to finish both Season 8 of 24 and Season 3 and 4 of Transformers: The Cartoon Series before the end of the month so as to be rid of the temptation for either, but it is obvious that won't happen by the end of the month, so they will fall under my Rule of Dangling Carrot.